Essays/linkedin/24-09-19 adoption curve

📉 #DidYouKnow that the technology adoption life cycle is the result of studying US-farmers' behavior in the 1950s?

Although it has been popularized as a bell, the original work (which is the summary of many contributions) actually shows the cumulative distribution over time, a much more powerful visualization, if you ask me.

There were many observations, from the size of the farms that adopted ideas earlier, to the level of education of the farmers. They also established that people preferred talking to neighbors as a source of information rather than to sales representatives. Keeping in mind that, sometimes, the introduction of a new idea required a behavioral change rather than the adoption of new technology.

As far as I know, everything that came after is a derivation from the observations published in 1956, leading to what's perhaps the most famous one: "Crossing the Chasm".

Intuitively, the adoption cycle makes sense. That's what we've seen when Apple released the iPhone, or when every entrepreneur chases "early adopters".

Maybe we just parse a pattern in the light of a very broad generalization of human behavior. Perhaps early adopters are just early because they found out first. Perhaps it's only a rate-limited diffusive system, where identities are less important.

In the meantime, if I see a chasm I'll cross it.